“The Factory of Fakes”, a long report by Daniel Zalewski in the November 28, 2016 issue of The New Yorker on how digital technology is being used to create perfect copies of fragile, threatened, or destroyed works of art has already been mentioned in many blogs and Facebook pages. It is a fascinating article that provides a glimpse into an alternate future for conservation. Zalewski writes about a project in which two copies are being made of the Polittico Griffoni, an altarpiece completed in 1473 and dismantled in 1725 and dispersed. One copy will bring together the panels as they are in their present disparate physical states. For the other copy, each panel will have been been digitally restored in such a way that all are in the same condition. He says, “Such a project might be the strongest challenge yet to the idea of physical restoration. If you can create a replica that effectively relays a curator’s hypothesis about what an art work once looked like, why make possibly damaging physical alterations to the original?” If one day all restoration is digital, what will this mean for the education and skill set of conservators? Will conservation training then have only two subject areas: environmental monitoring and control and the manipulation of digital data ?
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AIC Blog Archives: Conservators Converse
Former Blog of the American Institute for Conservation